hurrah! another year!

Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies - Recovery Speak

Contrary to popular opinion, indie music did not dissapear during the late 1990s. Whilst anyone with any pretence to being trendy had adopted the various forms of dance as their bestest faveourite bestest genre, the rest of us were either bopping away to Idlewild in smelly moshpits full of Lamacq-listeners, or were listening to the intensly introspective 'post-rock' of illuiminaries Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor!

I get the feeling that Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies had the same kind of dualism going on at that age as I did. YMSS attempt to conjoin both the structural ideas of post-rock, and perhaps some prog, with a punk aesthetic. Recovery Speak easily exemplifies YMSS's style - at one moment it is introspective, star-gazing space rock, the next it is full of contorted Shellac-esque punk riffs. It is however quieter compared to the spaz sprawl of tracks off YMSS's recent 'A little late he staggered through the door', featured on YMSS's recent mini album, which manages to move from instrumental, to shouty guitars, to a male choir, to an anthemic singalong.

You do get the impression that YMSS are having their cake and eating it. Rather than concentrating their energies on one genre of music they it seems that they are attempting to cover as much as they can. The great thing about YMSS is that they manage to pull it off - the variously differential elements manage to make something verging on a luicid indie epic. If they can perfect it,Several times in re-listening to the mini-album for this blog, I found myself shouting the lyrics and guesticulating happiness. Either I am mad or this band are fucking great.
I just wish they would shorten their titles - the album I speak of is titled (and I shit you not) "hurrah! another year, surely this one will be better than the last; the inexorable march of progress will lead us all to happiness". Ah well.

They're from Oxford.

(BTW - I am Deans - author of the Kitty Killer livejournal. Please to meet yooz).